Facebook’s News Feed uses information about your friends and commenting activity to cater to your interests – but it often misses the mark. To fix this, Facebook has unveiled a range of new Twitter-like controls to make it easier to personalise your News Feed. The new set of features are available on iOS now, and Facebook says they’ll be rolled out to Android and desktop users soon.
How does it work?
To help Facebook know what you think is important, you can now select which friends and Pages you want to see at the top of your News Feed. Like Twitter’s “While you were away” function, your News Feed will also show you what those friends have posted while you were gone.
Facebook’s new tool makes it easier to choose which Pages you want to see content from, and even includes an algorithm to help you discover more, related ones.
Made some poor following decisions? Facebook has a feature for that too. Users can access a list of the top people and Pages they’ve seen in their News Feed over the past week, and will be able to unfollow them with simple tap.
Why is this a good thing?
By adopting Twitter’s simple yet effective method of following friends and brands, Facebook is effectively turning its News Feed into a version of Twitter’s Timeline. Although it’s not the most original idea, Facebook’s decision to rely on user preference instead of algorithms will be hugely beneficial to Pages and users alike.
Brands should benefit from increased reach, while users will be able to receive comprehensive updates about their closest friends.
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